The Secret of Orchard Cottage

by Alex Brown

  A week later, and Nancy was dozing in the afternoon sun on a deckchair outside the entrance to the barn with April, Great Aunt Edie and Bella. Two days after she had arrived at Orchard Cottage, Nancy had called the fire station to see if she could extend her leave. She had loads of holiday owing to her, having preferred to keep busy after Dad’s death, and being at work with the lads had helped her do just that. And it really was idyllic here in Tindledale so she had been delighted when her boss had said yes to her taking a fortnight off. In fact, Nancy was sure she had heard a sigh of relief in his voice, for he had been saying for a while now that she was overdoing it and needed a break before she became a liability to herself and the rest of the watch. Plus, they had two firefighters over from another station to do some training so it wasn’t as if they were short-handed right now.

  Nancy pushed her shades up on top of her head and lifted the jug of ice-cold pear cider from the upturned apple crate that was currently serving as a picnic table. Jimmy, the organic cider producer, had called by earlier with a crate of each variety – bottles of traditional pear and apple made using fruit from the Orchard Cottage crop, a lovely summery strawberry and lime and several bottles of mulled cider that April had put away for Christmas – on the house as it were, as he was so made up with the quality of the fruit. And April had been over the moon with the subsequent payment, which had covered the cost of the thatcher to sort out the roof, plus there was some left over to build a proper stable for Darby and Joan – that was happening next week. And until then they were flourishing nicely in the makeshift stable in the barn. And Nancy had been delighted too, thinking she could really get used to the countryside way of life. Free cider would never happen in Basingstoke. There she’d be lucky to bag a BOGOF deal of Smirnoff Ice in the local Tesco Express.

  ‘More of this good stuff for you, Edie?’ Nancy asked, tilting the jug towards the old lady, making the ice cubes chink and the cider fizz as she batted away a big bumblebee before it nosedived into the frothy liquid.

  ‘Ooh, don’t mind if I do, dear,’ Edie chuckled and held out her glass. Nancy did the honours and poured her a generous top-up, smiling inwardly as she had come to realise that ‘Old Edie’ was rather partial to getting pleasantly sozzled in the afternoon sun. This was the third day in a row that they had sat in the garden gossiping and generally taking it easy. And why not? Nancy thought it a crying shame if a lady in her nineties couldn’t indulge at her time of life, and she fully intended on doing exactly the same when she reached her own dotage. They had been careful of course, and rigged up a gazebo using her tent for Edie to shade under. And Dr Ben had confirmed when he visited that Edie was indeed suffering from untreated hypothyroidism and had prescribed some more tablets which April was now in charge of administering each morning. They seemed to have given Edie back some degree of mental clarity and vigour, although he had confirmed that she had dementia too, which would account for the forgetfulness and periods of regression. But as she seemed quite content, he wasn’t about to prescribe more pills or suggest she be taken off to a home. Not when her niece was here and willing to look after her, is what he had said before he left. And Nancy had felt worried about this at first. How would Edie cope when April came home? But it was becoming clearer and clearer as the days went on that April was already at home. She seemed really happy here, lighter and less burdened somehow, which was a relief, but still, they needed to talk. Freddie was going on about moving out, wanting to travel around the world with one of his mates, and Nancy wasn’t sure that she wanted to stay in the bungalow on her own, not with all the memories it held of Dad being ill, especially if April wasn’t coming back – she didn’t want to lose her too and end up being completely on her own. But the right moment to talk hadn’t arisen so far, because either Bella had been here, or Harvey the fruit farmer. Nancy had taken an instant dislike to him – he was charming enough she supposed, but there was something about him that she just couldn’t quite put her finger on. And she certainly couldn’t chat to April in front of Aunt Edie; the last thing she wanted was to alarm the old lady with talk of April coming back to Basingstoke.

  ‘Top-up, April?’ Nancy pulled herself out of the deckchair and wandered over to her, but April was engrossed in reading another of the old diaries that they had found in the bedroom. ‘Earth calling Aaaaaapriiiiiil!’ Nancy gently kicked the side of the deckchair to get her attention.

  ‘Oh, yes please. And sorry. I’ve just reached Winnie’s eighteenth birthday!’ April looked up and simultaneously pushed her reading glasses on to her head. ‘And it’s fascinating. Listen to this …’

  Dear Diary,

  Mum and Dad pulled out all the stops with a marvellous garden party in the back orchard to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. Eighteen!!! I can hardly believe it. Trestle tables, put together end-to-end as long as a train, were piled high with all my favourites. Scotch eggs, pork pies, sausages, slices of corned beef, cheese sandwiches cut into dainty triangles, toffee apples, fruit jelly, Battenberg cake and best of all, my all-time favourite … cinnamon apple crumble and custard with Carnation milk …

  ‘Oh yes, I remember, dear.’ It was Edie, not so sozzled after all. She sat upright and adjusted her sun hat. ‘I was allowed a small glass of champagne. Mum had been saving it for a special occasion – her own mother had given it to her on her eighteenth birthday. Proper French champagne it was … but then my mother was from Paris. And very chic she was – always turned out nicely. Did you know that, April?’

  April, Nancy and Bella all looked at Edie and smiled, knowing to treasure the rare moments of lucidity, for they were becoming less frequent these days.

  ‘Yes, Aunty. I certainly do. Tell me about the party. What did you wear?’ April asked pleasantly, and Nancy’s heart softened – she marvelled at how kind and caring April was with her aunt. Just as she had been with Dad. She really did have the patience of a saint. Especially when her aunt called out in the middle of the night – Nancy had heard her and found herself feeling frustrated and grumpy at having been woken up, but nothing was too much trouble for April – and Nancy knew that she never would have coped with Dad towards the end if it hadn’t been for her. He would have had to go into a hospice or something, if it had all been down to Nancy and Freddie to care for him. And if Nancy thought about that for too long, the prospect made her feel so inadequate. She swallowed hard and concentrated on what Edie was saying, instead of letting her head run away with her. She couldn’t change the past and nothing was going to bring Dad back so she might as well get on with it. Stick on a brave face as she always had. It was the only way …

  ‘Oh, Winnie let me wear one of her dresses. A satin shift dress with a big red sash at the hip. I felt like a princess,’ Edie chuckled. ‘And after the party, we slept in the wagon. A special treat. Mind you, we didn’t get much shut-eye. Winnie kept me awake for most of the night reading aloud from her book about etiquette. She was obsessed with that book in the years before she left Tindledale – Mum gave it to her for her birthday. “It is a mark of ill-breeding to draw your gloves on in the street”!’ Aunt Edie said, adopting an especially posh voice, and the four of them laughed. ‘I remember it so clearly, as if it were yesterday. And do you know,’ Edie paused to point a bony finger in the air to punctuate her point, ‘to this day I have never done it – put my gloves on outside of the house! Absolutely not!’ Edie shook her head, making her snow-white curls swish all around.

  ‘Hmm, and I’m sure that line rings a bell.’ April put down the diary and lifted up another from the apple crate. She flicked through the pages. ‘Yes, see, right here … in the last diary, dated 1941, right before Winnie left to go to the FANY training place. I read this one first hoping there might be some clues as to what happened to her next. Why she didn’t return … Ahh, here we go. Look, it’s one of the last things she wrote! Just there on the page all by itself.’

  It is a mark of ill-breeding to draw your gloves on in the street.

  ‘Strange, isn
’t it?’ April commented. ‘And it stuck in my head as it’s also underlined in the book that Hettie gave me … presumably the same book that you’re referring to, Aunty?’

  Edie gave a polite nod and finished the last of her iced cider as a faraway look floated on to her face, making it clear that she had forgotten all about the book now – she was fading again.

  ‘Let me see.’ Nancy put the glass jug down on the dresser and leant in close to April to read the old-fashioned words written in sloped letters, and in real ink.

  ‘What do you think it means?’ April asked.

  ‘No idea.’ Nancy shrugged. ‘It’s a bit weird though, just written like that with no context … why would it be underlined in the book and then written in the diary too? What do you think, Edie?’ But Edie didn’t reply. She was fast asleep.

  ‘April, can I go and groom Darby and Joan please?’ Bella asked, putting her knitting down.

  ‘Sure love. You don’t need to ask …’

  ‘Thank you. Dad said I have to ask.’

  ‘Well, in that case you must,’ April laughed, as Bella skipped off to the end of the barn.

  ‘She’s such a nice kid,’ Nancy said, seeing how fond her stepmother was of the girl. And Nancy thought it was lovely … the dynamic Bella brought to Orchard Cottage, she kept things light, less heavy somehow, which was exactly what April needed. Plus, her dad wasn’t too bad either. Nancy hoped he’d ask April out, it was about time she had a bit of fun, a flirtation if nothing else. Hmm, the thought lingered.

  ‘Yes, she is …’ April said, slowly, deep in thought. She glanced over at Edie. ‘Is she still asleep?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good. I can show you this, in that case …’ She flicked back a few pages and tapped her fingernail next to another paragraph in Winnie’s diary. ‘It’s from when she was in the Land Army. Before she went off to join the FANY.’

  Nancy read the words in her head as April sipped some more of her cider.

  Dear Diary,

  The most shocking thing happened at the weekend. I went off with Rita and some of the other girls to a dance in Brighton and got caught up in an airstrike. I could see the flames in the distance lighting up the pier. A warden dragged me to the ground as the screech of another bomb came, but I couldn’t stay down as Rita had flames on her skirt and was screaming. I crawled on all fours to get to her, with fiery bits of wood and concrete coming down on me, which luckily I managed to duck out of the way to avoid, and then used my jacket to roll her in. Poor thing was in agony but I couldn’t leave her there to suffer, or worse. No, I certainly couldn’t do that.

  I heard the next day that she didn’t make it. Finch was awfully kind about it, said I deserved a medal for keeping such a cool head and risking my own life to try to save poor Rita’s – apparently the warden notified him … I don’t remember a thing really, after Rita went off in the ambulance. How I got back to base is still a mystery. I had a ride in a car, a tractor and the last transport I remember was a horse and cart. Wish I had worn my breeches and socks and not a silly dress and shoes.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Nancy exhaled. ‘Really brings it home, doesn’t it? The true horror of war and what that generation went through.’ She shook her head vehemently.

  ‘Sure does. And wasn’t Winnie brave? I agree with Finch – she should have got a medal for crawling on all fours under a bomb drop to try to save her friend!’ April nodded. ‘Yes, I’m glad her bravery was brought to this Finch man’s attention, whoever he was …’

  ‘Absolutely. Who is he?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘Someone important by the sounds of it. Winnie had volunteered for driving duties for the nearby army base, apparently. I read about that in one of her letters home, and made a note in my pad,’ April said.

  ‘Ahh, I see. Come on, let’s read some more … where are you up to?’ Nancy said, intrigued.

  ‘Here.’ April carefully thumbed through a number of pages until she reached a faded old envelope that she was using as a bookmark.

  ‘Oops.’ Nancy bent down to retrieve the envelope as it fluttered out of April’s hand on to the grass. She turned it over, scrutinising it before going to hand it back to April. And then something caught her eye. It was faint, but there nonetheless, an imprint on the inside of the envelope, like a stamp, a crest perhaps … ‘Where did you get this?’ Nancy asked. ‘Was it in the diary?’

  ‘No, I found it in the sideboard tucked behind the pen tin, why?’ April asked.

  ‘It’s addressed to Mr G. Lovell, Orchard Cottage, Tindledale.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. George was Edie’s father, my great grandfather.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Nancy said, opening the envelope and examining it some more.

  ‘Not really. My aunt is a bit of a hoarder, there are loads of old letters and paperwork in the sideboard in the sitting room,’ April said.

  ‘Might be worth having a root through it all then, because unless I’m mistaken, I’d say that mark there looks official.’ Nancy tapped the middle of the envelope to show April.

  ‘Ahh, yes, I see it now, the outline of a crown.’

  ‘Exactly. So whatever was in this envelope addressed to Winnie’s dad might have been official.’

  ‘From the War Office maybe!’ April’s eyes widened. ‘Will you watch Edie while I take a proper look through the sideboard?’

  ‘Sure. But first, read me that next bit of the diary please. I’m dying to know more about Winnie. It feels a bit naughty looking through someone’s secret diary, and besides, if there is anything important in that sideboard, then it isn’t going anywhere, is it?’

  ‘True.’ April turned a few more pages until she spotted the name Finch again. ‘Ooh, here he is …’ And both women read on, utterly enthralled.

  Dear Diary,

  I’m in love, it’s true! Not that I know for sure, having never felt this way before, but when Finch pressed his lips on to mine, a glorious fluttery feeling radiated within me. Jolly good we were in the back orchard, for if we were indoors and alone, then I’m not sure I would have managed to resist him for a moment longer.

  And I shall press, and then treasure the violet that he picked for me on our woodland walk. And cherish the romantic words he said on slipping the flower into my button hole – ‘It really is a hardy little heart-shaped flower, so brave to battle winter only to bloom in spring, heralding a new beginning.’

  But of course, it’s prudent not to take it with me, for …

  And the rest of the words were so faded it was hard to read on until the end of the sentence.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ April asked, lowering her voice as she closed the diary, figuring the crumbled brown flakes that had fallen from this particular page had once been a flower, the precious violet picked for her great aunt by her lover all those years ago. It was romantic. And so very poignant, given that the young Winnie who wrote these words had vanished soon after, never to be seen again by her family.

  ‘That maybe the rumours were true after all,’ whispered Nancy. ‘Seems Winnie definitely had a man on the go. And why would she not want to take his flower with her? Only reason I can think of is that she didn’t want the other girls to see it …’ Nancy’s forehead creased as she tried to work it all out. ‘Ooh, I do love an old mystery – this is just like Cold Case, my favourite box set.’ She swigged some more cider. ‘And this must mean that she had a secret! Or he did! That he was married …’

  ‘Perhaps. But do you think it might be a bit of a leap? Just because Winnie thought it prudent not to take a pressed violet with her when she went off to do her FANY training doesn’t mean that the man, Finch … I wonder who he is? Hmm …’ Both women pondered the possibilities for a few seconds. ‘But this isn’t proof that he was married, or that Winnie ran off with him and had his baby … she even says that she managed to resist him. And Hettie practically said the same too, that Winnie wasn’t like that at all. She was a good girl – those were Hettie’s exact words.’

 
; ‘True,’ Nancy replied, ‘but you have to admit though, it’s looking like the most plausible explanation. She would have come back to Tindledale otherwise, surely. Why wouldn’t she? It’s idyllic here and it was her home … maybe she didn’t manage to resist Finch the next time they kissed and she ended up getting pregnant and he was married, and she was unmarried! Now that would have been a massive scandal in those days. No wonder she didn’t come back home … probably thought it best to keep well clear under the circumstances. Her parents could very well have disowned her. It happened in the olden days, that’s what they did. Or what if they had made her give away the baby? That happened a lot too! Just think of all those women on that TV programme, Long Lost Family.’

  ‘OK. Well, let’s not get too carried away in making up the story, and say that she did run off with Finch, aka the married man, and had his baby … there’s still no real evidence of that.’ April kept her voice very low. ‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’

  ‘Not really! There was a war on, who knows what paperwork got lost. And didn’t you say Winnie’s last letter to Edie was posted from London?’ April nodded. ‘Well, there you go! The Blitz. She could have died when a bomb dropped. It’s entirely likely,’ Nancy mouthed pragmatically, her eyes darting over to Edie as she started tidying away the empty glasses on to the dresser.

  ‘I suppose so.’ April closed the diary and placed it inside the wooden apple crate with the others before carefully stowing it on the dresser away from the hay. ‘I don’t want the diaries getting ruined,’ she said, ‘they are part of my heritage after all. My family history right there.’ She grinned. ‘It’s most likely that Winnie did in fact die during the war. And I must find a way to explain that to Edie.’

  ‘But do you really need to?’ Nancy gave April a look and then they both glanced over at the elderly lady snoozing in the afternoon sun. Content. Her weathered face relaxed and peaceful. ‘Why upset her? Maybe it would be kinder to just let her carry on thinking that Winnie is still alive …’